Contd..
In a country like India it is a known fact that poverty varies from state to state rgion to region within the state and in different social groups,. If such is the case, a sweeping report of poverty in different countries can not be easily comparable . Reports like this may create a serious confusion among the readers all over the world and they may in fact misunderstand the entire issue and the problem.
=US

Contd..
In a country like India it is a known fact that poverty varies from state to state rgion to region within the state and in different social groups,. If such is the case, a sweeping report of poverty in different countries can not be easily comparable . Reports like this may create a serious confusion among the readers all over the world and they may in fact misunderstand the entire issue and the problem.
=US

The methodology adopted by the world bank to assess the poverty should be discussed properly with appropriate experts and the people who are really associated with poverty studies. With my experience in the field I am unable to believe the figures of poverty furnished in the report.
=US

Poverty has been researched to death! Over the years numerous ways have been devised for evaluating the poverty line, and many organisations have been formed to address poverty. Sadly, there appears to be no worldwide gains in alleviating poverty. This is because of self-interest: individual(s)' seeking for their efforts in undertaking fresh studies funded by glory-seeking corporations to be recognised, apathy by governments and non-governmental organisations, etc. But no one cares about alleviating the fundamental causes of poverty. Isn't it time we just did something, and to stop analysing the situation to death? The poor care less about these studies anyway.

The 'informed' world should do something: devise and implement a framework for giving poor people a lift! The money, intellectual capacity, ability and goodwill exist to exploit the interlinkage between provision of proper housing, sanitation, healthcare, sustainable livelihood, rural mortgage finance and good governance, and to deliver benefits directly to the 'identified' poor outside irresponsible governance structures. But who will take the lead? Even as the World Bank and the UN have failed to do so.

How can any country provide adequate food,drinking water,sanitation facilities,health,shetler,education,access to information,access to basic services for $1.25 ? ( lets leave transportation,communication,entertainment and personal belongings for now )

There are several options that I can think of :-

- Return to nomadic life, but then I may die from a mosquito bite

- Abolish currency, but thats not possible cos none of the Gods including mr jesus christ,mr mohammed,mr shiva and mr buddha in the heavens provide free lunches.(May be we should abolish all religion with masculine gods and replace them with feminine ones)

- Build exhorbitant reserves of the items mentioned above
through colonialism,war on terrors,selling nuclear
tech,selling F-16,slavery(IT services and cheap manufacturing included),religion and then kill your
own people

- Find an alien who has better brains and no ambitions and who
can provide a better framework to run the world.

- Genetically transform homo sapiens to emperor penguins and
send them to antarctica

I think there are various flaws in the World Bank's methedologies for calculating the poverty.First flaw is, i saw in the world bank's report was how can they(world bank) set a benchmark of $1.25 (previously $1) to calculate poverty? Take an example of India for instance, prices of the goods in India are really low if you compare it with the global standards, Government gives subsidy on various food & non food items. Due to all the rationing & subsidy rudimentary cost for all the needs for people are really low in India. This is the most important reason why people in India are leaving quite well for $1.25($1) a day. Second flaw is, consider a country(small or big) whose economy is in surpluses. In this country all the basic good are available in abundant, due to this people over there get all these goods very cheaply and due to this a person can leave grandly with $1 a day. Does this mean the people living in this country are poor?I am not ignoring the fact that the India is a country with the largest number of poor people but i want to just say that the numbers provided by the report is exaggerated and the survey was done without considering various aspects of Indian politics & other aspects of life.

The World Bank has done absoutely nothing to combat poverty. They are just experts at getting 3rd world countries into debt. Arguing over the exact penny at which to draw the "poverty line" is just part of their bullshit.

The World Bank is extrapolating its urban mindset to
the nomadic and tribal and agrarian populations of the world,
as though these people lived in New York City and
consumed only "Big Macs " for nourishment.

Is it poverty if you have a thriving farm or a herd
of cattle and you are healthy, happy and content
with your food and water, but you do not have $1.25
because you do not wear modern clothes and there
are no ATM's in the savannah?

We can presume that the World Bank wants more handouts
from it money sources so that it can raise its salaries.

I dont know how they are calculating the no.of persons living below poverty line (i.e below 1.25USD => 55 Indian Rupees approx). because basically Indians are family oriented and they live in family. consider for example a family of 5 which consist of 3 earing, 1 child and 1 elder persons. By the world bank limit if 3 persons earning rs 55(1.25USD) per day that will be 165/day and comes to 5000 rs(approx). this will be enuogh for that family of 5 living in a town or village in India. though they will be still poor but definitely not below poverty line . but if you take average of rs 165 for 5 then it will come 33 Rs(165/5=33). Hence now, the family of 5 per person, they are living below poverty line.
I doubt whether they will be considering this fact while doing their calculation !!!!

My emphasis is on the figure "1.25" which is abysmally wrong,and I will have to argue that such figures are a result of systemic failure,meaning the "processes" that led to these figure is entirely wrong.

I come from a village,from a state called kerala in a poor country called india. If I do a crude conversion in Fx terms 1.25 dollar a day equals 50 rupees a day,which cannot even feed a person leave alone provide an adequate standard of living even in a poor fisherman village in kerala!

The world has 1000 billionaires and 10.1 million high networth individuals (people who have more than a million to spend) and a poverty line is set at 1.25 dollars !! How Absurd !

Deepth, so what - nothing should be done to combat poverty because poverty is so profound?Exceeding $1.25/day is not some final target, it is a metric to track the trends of the results of poverty alleviating policies and identify their shortcomings. One can only achieve a goal by carefully planning out each step along the way.

Kalelo:There is no magic formula. If only! Here are some clues though.1)Leadership (enlightened, not the toxic variety) is all2)Identify smartest change agents and dump rent-seekers, MBA-wallahs!3)People with highest sense of integrity must chair institutions4)Lead by example and strive to send honest/consistent signals5)Never outsource thinking, especially not to IMF/World Bank6)Singapore has shown how to optimise the use of carrot and stick (incentive and disincentive) to generate results. Of course, one can dispute the strategy on ethnocentric grounds!

Oh dear,if 1.25 dollar a day is the line at which poverty line is drawn how useless that line is ,and how pointless is the time and money spent in fine tuning that amount and how pathetic is is to run a world like this !

Nicaragua is the 2nd poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, only 1 in 3 Nicaraguan eats 3 meals a day81% of the rural pop. has no access to clean, potable, running water87% are deemed poorthe annual per capita GDP (nominal) is only 800 USDthe average employee has only 4-5 yrs of schoolingand thanks to our current government, we, have the highest inflation in the region, the highest oil/gas prices, the only country where FDI has either slowed, stopped or is trickling and where public investment leaves wanting... a sad state indeed.Also, Carl from Nicaragua, i must agree with you on the corruption issue as well. According to WB study, in kleptocracies like ours, almost 70% of every dollar that flows through government hands winds up in private banks, and personal agendas.A sad state it is... a sad state it is....

Carl from Nicaragua:I am also from Nicaragua and I, in fact, work for an NGO that is evolving in precisely the manner you suggested. In that, we are growing further apart from being an organism that strictly doles out donations to becoming an organism that effectively intervenes in the cycle of poverty through implementing strategic, comprehensive and sustainable economic development projects that target only the neediest sector of the populous. To put in another fashion, we don't just hand out the fish; we give them the nets, the rods and the educational empowerment on how to sustainably exploit the fish population to ensure viability and the transmission of such through future generations.www.aidnicaragua.org

Poverty is getting worse by the year in all countries and where the capitalist/market forces system is failing everyone but the very few. In this respect the Millennium goals were not attainable from the very start as James D. Wolfensohn stated in 1999 when he was President of the World Bank and where out of the 6 billion people presently living on our planet, 3 billion live on less than two dollars a day. By the end of the next fifteen years (2015), these will be 4 billion out of 8 billion (living on the same amount). In other words, the UN's Millennium Development Goals of halving poverty by 2015 was defunct before it even began. For an insight into the growing poverty problem I direct people to read the interview given to Press TV today, ‘Fighting poverty, a global challenge’ – http://www.presstv.ir/Detail.aspx?id=68059&sectionid=3510302Dr David HillWorld Innovation Foundation Charity (WIFC)Bern, Switzerland31st August 2008

I am very thankful to resercher that at leat they have reviewed their thougths about defination of poverty but there are lot many indicater which can still improve the defination of poverty as there are third and forth degree of products which some people are are buying to feed themselves and use even use clothes to cover up their bodies.What can be done to reduce the povert doesent lies in the defination of poverty although its important for creating awerness among people and specally rich persons. what kind of life style most of the people in this world offord.Poverty also a root couse to most of terrist organisain "Can we think of person who not being able to have enough food for him self or his child.what will he or she do then."SO, i really apreciate these efforts from resercher to under stand poverty .But, we desprately have need to find out how to reduce poverty to such a extant that we can have better world all around.

You are right (CARL FROM NICARAGUA,)but i does not mean that the NATO AND USA should feed poor peoples,what i want to express that the the world of these poorer peoples were much better if the money spent on wars and destruction has been spen on education,health ,and other positive activities not only food.

As a person living in a very poor country, Nicaragua, I thank you for reporting on poverty issues around the world. Rather than criticize NATO and the USA for not feeding the poor as decentexplorer does on his/her posted comment, I understand the nature of our poverty to be due mostly to the corruption that has permeated our local society for decades if not centuries. Feeding the poor from the outside does not and will not solve the problem, but may actually worsen it (as much as we do welcome foreign aid). It is like a rich father subsidizing his forty-year-old son and never giving him an education nor the need to work and feed himself. If I may recommend a future article, perhaps you can research a few of the most effective efforts that are being made to reduce poverty around the world. That way, those of us (who are not that poor) in the poorer countries can learn by example and try to help our own poor help themselves and raise their heads out of their misery. On the other hand, should anyone like to experiment on a effort to reduce poverty, I would consider Nicaragua as a potential starting point since with only 5.5M people the results may be evaluated faster than in a very populated country. My guess is that such an effort needs to begin with education of moral values to lessen corruption throughout our society, leading to more honest institutions, better education, equal opportunities, development of tourism and infrastructure, development of industries, development of renewable energy plants, etc... all of it being a true long term solution having nothing at all to do with the USA and NATO feeding our poor. We need to feed ourselves.